2 comments:

Excellent interview Alan and nice to see some sound sense regarding robotics going out on the BBC.On the question of ethics, I was interested to know where you stand on the notion that robots are set to take jobs & cause further unemployment. Are there ethical spaces out there for robots where this will not happen? - Wasn't this also the unfounded belief of computers!

On the question of jobs - I think that you have raised a deeply problematical question. It's something of an elephant-in-the-room in robotics. My view that that it's nonsense to pretend that robots don't replace jobs - we only need to look at a car assembly line for evidence of that. But at the same time robotics is creating new jobs - some would argue by creating a whole new industry sector. But the hard question (which I don't pretend to have an answer for) is what is the net effect - the balance of job loss and job creation.